Elon Musk won’t be seen smoking pot in public again, says NASA

Langley researchers have developed the technology that companies can bid on. And India and China both have announced plans to send robotic explorers to the moon's surface in 2019.

Citing worries over components such as parachutes, the first flight has been pushed back to an unspecified date later in the spring, casting doubt on whether a crewed flight could occur this year from U.S. soil. "We want multiple providers that are competing on cost and innovation".

Speaking to reporters on Thursday in Washington, D.C., NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Musk's behavior "was not appropriate". Working with USA companies is the next step to achieving long-term scientific study and human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Musk is the CEO of SpaceX which does a lot of contractor work for NASA, including building new vehicles (alongside Boeing) to bring NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in the coming years.

The Trump administration also directed NASA to seek and encourage additional private sector participation.

The goal is to get science and technology experiments to the surface of the moon as soon as possible, and the first flight could be next year.

"They haven't done spacecraft so this is a bit of a new departure for them", McDowell said. "That foil collected material from the sun and provided the best measurements of the sun we had for the next 25 years". We're going with global partnerships on a level never seen before. There was President Trump's Space Policy Directive One for one, and the involvement of both commercial and worldwide partners.

"This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and, perhaps, someday to many worlds beyond".

A layout of NASA's Moon to Mars mission.

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That's more than the 1-million-barrel gain predicted in a Bloomberg survey, overshadowing a surprise draw in gasoline inventories. There is need of a cut, but Russian Federation doesn't want to chip in with a large cut, a second source told Reuters.

"We have been maturing our lander technology over the last 10 years in preparation for this day", Matthew Kuhns chief engineer with Masten Space Systems and SpaceFlight Insider contributor said when asked what this means for Masten.

As NASA is already making plans to come up with a lunar orbiter in early-2020s and bring humans back to the Moon later in the 2020s, Russian Federation could not stay passive to what shapes up to be a modern space race, more or less led by private space companies.

Throughout the past moon missions, astronauts spent only 16 days at six sites on the surface. Namely, that the United States would be returning to it "sooner than we might think".

NASA released a draft request for proposals April 27 that called for US companies to "introduce new technologies to deliver payloads to the Moon", NASA said when announcing the initial request for proposals.

The Gateway, a lunar orbiting platform, will be the farthest humans have ever lived from Earth.

He also said NASA hopes to be just one of several customers providing payloads for these commercial missions.

"The project we are experimenting with is for the long-term habitation by humans". "We've had a number of conversations", he explained.

A replica of the Mars InSight lander at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, showing instruments used to study the planet.